been devoted to commanding a regiment, to training young officers, or to
ruling a distant province, were too lightly rated by the Government, and
he spent his time quietly in England and France educating his two
daughters,[13] interesting himself in politics, and continuing to learn.
It was the political crisis in England which called him back to active
life. The readjustment of the labour market to meet the use of
machinery, and the occurrence of a series of bad harvests had caused
widespread discontent, and the Chartist movement was at its height in
1839. Labourers and factory owners were alarmed; the Government was
besieged with petitions for military protection at a hundred points, and
all the elements of a dangerous explosion were gathered together. At
this critical time Charles Napier was offered the command of the troops
in the northern district, and amply did he vindicate the choice. By the
most careful preparation beforehand, by the most consummate coolness in
the moment of danger, he rode the storm. He saw the danger of billeting
small detachments of troops in isolated positions; he concentrated them
at the important points. He interviewed alarmed magistrates, and he
attended, in person and unarmed, a large gathering of Chartists. To all
he spoke calmly but resolutely. He made it clear to the rich that he
would not order a shot to be fired while peaceful measures were
possible; he made it equally clear to the Chartists that he would
suppress disorder, if it arose, promptly and mercilessly. With only four
thousand troops under his command to control all the industrial
districts of the north, Newcastle and Manchester, Sheffield and
Nottingham, he did his work effectually without a shot being fired. 'Ars
est celare artem': and just because of his success, few observers
realized from how great a danger the community had been preserved.
[Note 13: His first wife, whom he married in 1827, died in 1832. He
married again in 1835.]
Thus he had proved his versatile talents in regimental service in the
Peninsula, in the reclamation of an eastern island from barbarism, and
in the control of disorder at home. It was not till he had reached the
age of sixty that he was to prove these gifts in the highest sphere, in
the handling of an army in the field and in the direction of a campaign.
But the offer of a command in India roused his indomitable spirit, the
more so as trouble was threatening on the north-west frontier. An
ill-judged interference in Afgh[=a]nist[=a]n had in 1841 caused the
massacre near K[=a]bul of one British force: other contingents were
besieged in Jal[=a]l[=a]b[=a]d and Ghazni, and were in danger of a
similar fate, and the prestige of British arms was at its lowest in the
valley of the Indus. Lord Ellenborough, the new Viceroy, turned to
Charles Napier for advice, and in April 1842 he was given the command in
Upper and Lower Sind, the districts comprising the lower Indus valley.
It was his first experience of India and his first command in war. He
was sixty years old and he had not faced an enemy's army in the field
since the age of twenty-five. As he said, 'I go to command in Sind with
no orders, no instructions, no precise line of policy given! How many
men are in Sind? How many soldiers to command? No one knows!... They
tell me I must form and model the staff of the army altogether! Feeling
myself but an apprentice in Indian matters, I yet look in vain for a
master.' But the years of study and preparation had not been in vain,
and responsibility never failed to call out his best qualities. It was
not many months before British officers and soldiers, Baluch chiefs and
Sindian peasants owned him as a master--such a master of the arts of war
and peace as had not been seen on the Indus since the days of Alexander
the Great.
First, like a true pupil of Sir John Moore, he set to work thoroughly to
drill his army. He experimented in person with British muskets and
Mar[=a]th[=a] matchlocks, and reassured his soldiers on the superiority
of the former. He experimented with rockets to test their efficiency;
and, with his usual luck in the matter of wounds, he had the calf of
his leg badly torn by one that burst. He would put his hand to any
labour and his life to any risk, if so he might stir the activity of
others and promote the cause. He convinced himself, by studying the
question at first hand, that the Baluch Am[=i]rs, who ruled the country,
were not only aliens but oppressors of the native peasantry, not only
ill-disposed to British policy, but actively plotting with the
hill-tribes beyond the Indus, and at the right moment he struck.
The danger of the situation lay in the great extent of the country, in
the difficulty of marching in such heat amid the sand, and in the
possibility of the Am[=i]rs escaping from his grasp and taking refuge in
fortresses in the heart of the desert, believed to be inaccessible. His
first notable exploit was a march northwards one hundred miles into the
desert to capture Im[=a]mghar; his last, crowning a memorable sixteen
days, was a similar descent upon Omarkot, which lay one hundred miles
eastward beyond M[=i]rpur. These raids involved the organization of a
camel corps, the carrying of water across the desert, and the greatest
hardships for the troops, all of which Charles Napier shared
uncomplainingly in person. Under his leadership British regiments and
Bombay sepoys alike did wonders. Who could complain for himself when he
saw the spare frame of the old general, his health undermined by fever
and watches, his hooked nose and flashing eye turned this way and that,
riding daily at their head, prepared to stint himself of all but the
barest necessaries and to share every peril? He had begun the campaign
in January; the crowning success was won on April 6. Between these dates
he fought two pitched battles at Mi[=a]ni and Dabo, and completely broke
the power of the Am[=i]rs.
Mi[=a]ni (February 17, 1843) was the most glorious day in his life. With
2,400 troops, of whom barely 500 were Europeans, he attacked an army
variously estimated between 20,000 and 40,000. Drawn up in a position,
which they had themselves chosen, on the raised bank of a dry river bed,
the Baluch[=i] seemed to have every advantage on their side. But the
British troops, advancing in echelon from the right, led by the 22nd
Regiment, and developing an effective musketry fire, fought their way up
to the outer slope of the steep bank and held it for three hours. Here
the 22nd, with the two regiments of Bombay sepoys on their left,
trusting chiefly to the bayonet, but firing occasional volleys, resisted
the onslaught of Baluch[=i] swordsmen in overwhelming numbers. During
nearly all this time the two lines were less than twenty yards apart,
and Napier was conspicuous on horseback riding coolly along the front of
the British line. The matchlocks, with which many of the Baluch[=i] were
armed, seem to have been ineffective; their national weapon was the
sword. The tribesmen were grand fighters but badly led. They attacked in
detachments with no concerted action. For all that, the British line
frequently staggered under the weight of their courageous rushes, and
irregular firing went on across the narrow gap. Napier says, 'I expected
death as much from our own men as from the enemy, and I was much singed
by our fire--my whiskers twice or thrice so, and my face peppered by
fellows who, in their fear, fired over all heads but mine, and nearly
scattered my brains'. Not even Scarlett at Balaclava had a more
miraculous escape. This exposure of his own person to risk was not due
to mere recklessness. In his days at the Royal Military College he had
carefully considered the occasions when a commander must expose himself
to get the best out of his men; and from Coruña to Dabo he acted
consistently on his principles. Early in the battle he had cleverly
disposed his troops so as to neutralize in some measure the vast
numerical superiority of the enemy; his few guns were well placed and
well served. At a critical moment he ordered a charge of cavalry which
broke the right of their position and threatened their camp; but the
issue had to be decided by hard fighting, and all depended on the morale
which was to carry the troops through such a punishing day.
The second battle was fought a month later at Dabo, near
Hyder[=a]b[=a]d. The most redoubtable of the Am[=i]rs, Sher Muhammad,
known as 'the Lion of M[=i]rpur', had been gathering a force of his own
and was only a few miles distant from Mi[=a]ni when that battle was
fought. Napier could have attacked him at once; but, to avoid bloodshed,
he was ready to negotiate. 'The Lion' only used the respite to collect
more troops, and was soon defying the British with a force of 25,000
men, full of ardour despite their recent defeat. Indeed Napier
encouraged their confidence by spreading rumours of the terror
prevailing in his own camp. He did not wish to exhaust his men
needlessly by long marches in tropical heat; so he played a waiting
game, gathering reinforcements and trusting that the enemy would soon
give him a chance of fighting. This chance came on March 24, and with a
force of 5,000 men and 19 guns Napier took another three hours to win
his second battle and to drive Sher Muhammad from his position with the
loss of 5,000 killed. The British losses were relatively trifling,
amounting to 270, of whom 147 belonged to the sorely tried 22nd
Regiment. They were all full of confidence and fought splendidly under
the general's eye. 'The Lion' himself escaped northwards, and two months
of hard marching and clever strategy were needed to prevent him stirring
up trouble among the tribesmen. The climate took toll of the British
troops and even the general was for a time prostrated by sunstroke; but
the operations were successful and the last nucleus of an army was
broken up by Colonel Jacob on June 15. Sher Muhammad ended his days
ignominiously at Lahore, then the capital of the Sikhs, having outlived
his fame and sunk into idleness and debauchery.
Thus in June 1843 the general could write in his diary: 'We have taught
the Baluch that neither his sun nor his desert nor his jungles nor his
nullahs can stop us. He will never face us more.' But Charles Napier's
own work was far from being finished. He had to bind together the
different elements in the province, to reconcile chieftain and peasant
Baluch, Hindu, and Sindian, to living together in amity and submitting
to British rule; and he had to set up a framework of military and
civilian officers to carry on the work. He held firmly the principle
that military rule must be temporary. For the moment it was more
effective; but it was his business to prepare the new province for
regular civil government as soon as was feasible. He showed his
ingenuity in the personal interviews which he had with the chieftains;
and the ascendancy which he won by his character was marked. Perhaps his
qualities were such as could be more easily appreciated by orientals
than by his own countrymen, for he was impetuous, self-reliant, and
autocratic in no common degree. He was only one of a number of great
Englishmen of this century whose direct personal contact with Eastern
princes was worth scores of diplomatic letters and paper constitutions.
Such men were Henry Lawrence, John Nicholson, and Charles Gordon; in
them the power of Great Britain was incarnate in such a form as to
strike the imagination and leave an ineffaceable impression. Many of the
Am[=i]rs wished to swear allegiance to a governor present in the flesh
rather than to the distant queen beyond the sea, so strongly were they
impressed by Napier's personal character.
He did not forget his own countrymen, least of all that valued friend
'Thomas Atkins' and his comrade the sepoy. By the erection of spacious
barracks he made the soldier's life more pleasant and his health more
secure; and in a hundred other ways he showed his care and affection for
them. In return few British generals have been so loved by the rank and
file. He also gave much thought to material progress, to strengthening
the fortress of Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, to developing the harbour at
Kar[=a]chi, and, above all, to enriching the peasants by irrigation
schemes. It was the story of Cephalonia on a bigger scale; but Napier
was now twenty years older, overwhelmed with work, and he could give
less attention to details. He did his best to find subordinates after
his own heart, men who would 'scorn delights and live laborious days'.
'Does he wear varnished boots?' was a typical question that he put to a
friend in Bombay, when a new engineer was commended to him. His own
rewards were meagre. The Grand Cross of the Bath and the colonelcy of
his favourite regiment, the 22nd, were all the recognition given for a
campaign whose difficulties were minimized at home because he had
mastered them so triumphantly.
Two other achievements belong to the period of his government of Sind.
The campaign against the tribes of the Kachhi Hills, to the north-west
of his province, rendered necessary by continued marauding, shows all
his old mastery of organization. Any one who has glanced into Indian
history knows the danger of these raids and the bitter experience which
our Indian army has gained in them. In less than two months
(January-March 1845) Napier had led five thousand men safely over
burning deserts and through most difficult mountain country, had by
careful strategy driven the marauders into a corner, forcing them to
surrender with trifling loss, and had made an impression on the hill
chieftains which lasted for many a year. This work, though slighted by
the directors of the Company, received enthusiastic praise from such
good judges of war as Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. The
second emergency arose when the first Sikh war broke out in the Punjab.
Napier felt so confident in the loyalty of his newly-pacified province
that within six weeks he drew together an army of 15,000 men, and took
post at Rohri, ready to co-operate against the Sikhs from the south,
while Lord Hardinge advanced from the east. Before he could arrive, the
decisive battle had been fought, and all he was asked to do was to
assist in a council of war at Lahore. The mistakes made in the campaign
had been numerous. No one saw them more clearly than Napier, and no one
foretold more accurately the troubles which were to follow. For all
that, he wrote in generous admiration of Lord Hardinge the Viceroy and
Lord Gough the Commander-in-Chief at a time when criticism and personal
bitterness were prevalent in many quarters.
After this he returned to Sind with health shattered and a longing for
rest. He continued to work with vigour, but his mind was set on
resignation; and the bad relations which had for years existed between
him and the directors embittered his last months. No doubt he was
impatient and self-willed, inclined to take short cuts through the
system of dual control[14] and to justify them by his own single-hearted
zeal for the good of the country. But the directors had eyes for all the
slight irregularities, which are inevitable in the work of an original
man, and failed entirely to estimate the priceless services that he
rendered to British rule. In July 1847 he resigned and returned to
Europe; but even now the end was not come. 'The tragedy must be re-acted
a year or two hence,' he had written in March 1846, seeing clearly that
the Sikhs had not been reconciled to British rule. In February 1849 the
directors were forced by the national voice to send him out to take
supreme military command and to retrieve the disasters with which the
second Sikh war began. They were very reluctant to do so, and Napier
himself had little wish for further exertions in so thankless a service.
But the Duke of Wellington himself appealed to him, the nation spoke
through all its organs, and he could not put his own wishes in the scale
against the demands of public service.
[Note 14: The dual control of British India by the Crown and the
East India Company lasted from 1778 to 1858.]
He made all speed and reached Calcutta early in May, but he found no
enemy to fight. The issue had been decided by Lord Gough and the hard
fighting of Chili[=a]nw[=a]la. He had been cheated by fortune, as in
1815, and he never knew the joy of battle again. He was accustomed to
settle everything as a dictator; he found it difficult to act as part of
an administrative machine. He was unfamiliar with the routine of Indian
official life, and he was now growing old; he was impatient of forms,
impetuous in his likes and dislikes, outspoken in praise and
condemnation. His relations with the masterful Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie,
were soon clouded; and though he delighted in the friendship of Colin
Campbell and many other able soldiers, he was too old to adapt himself
to new men and new measures. In 1850 the rumblings of the storm, which
was to break seven years later, could already be heard, and Napier had
much anxiety over the mutinous spirit rising in the sepoy regiments. He
did his best to go to the bottom of the trouble and to establish
confidence and friendly relations between British and natives, but he
had not time enough to achieve permanent results, and he was often
fettered by the regulations of the political service. His predictions
were as striking now as in the first Sikh war; but he was not content to
predict and to sit idle. He was unwearied in working for the reform of
barracks, though his plans were often spoiled by the careless execution
of others. He was urgent for a better tone among regimental officers
and for more consideration on their part towards their soldiers. If more
men in high position had similarly exerted themselves, the mutiny would
have been less widespread and less fatal. His resignation was due to a
dispute with Lord Dalhousie about the sepoys' pay. Napier acted _ultra
vires_ in suspending on his own responsibility an order of the
Government, because he believed the situation to be critical, while the
Viceroy refused to regard this as justified. His departure, in December
1850, was the signal for an outburst of feeling among officers,
soldiers, and all who knew him. His return by way of Sind was a
triumphal progress.
He had two years to live when he set foot again in England, and most of
this was spent at Oaklands near Portsmouth. His health had been ruined
in the public service; but he continued to take a keen interest in
passing events and to write on military subjects to Colin Campbell and
other friends. At the same time he devoted much of his time to his
neighbours and his farm. In 1852 he attended as pall-bearer at the Duke
of Wellington's funeral; his own was not far distant. His brother, Sir
William, describes the last scene thus: 'On the morning of August 29th
1853, at 5 o'clock, he expired like a soldier on a naked camp bedstead,
the windows of the room open and the fresh air of Heaven blowing on his
manly face--as the last breath escaped, Montagu McMurdo (his
son-in-law), with a sudden inspiration, snatched the old colours of the
22nd Regiment, the colour that had been borne at Mi[=a]ni and
Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, and waved them over the dying hero. Thus Charles Napier
passed from the world.'
He was a man who roused enthusiastic devotion and provoked strong
resentment. Like Gordon, he was a man who could rule others, but could
not be ruled; and his official career left many heart-burnings behind.
His equally passionate brother, Sir William, who wrote his life, took
up the feud as a legacy and pursued it in print for many years. It is
regrettable that such men cannot work without friction; but in all
things it was devotion to the public service, and not personal ambition,
that carried Charles Napier to such extremes. From his youth he had
trained himself to such a pitch of self-denial and ascetic rigour that
he could not make allowance for the frailties of the average man. His
keen eye and swift brain made him too impatient of the shortcomings of
conscientious officials. He was ready to work fifteen hours a day when
the need came; he was able to pierce into the heart of a matter while
others would be puzzling round the fringes of it. Rarely in his long and
laborious career did an emergency arise capable of bringing out all his
gifts; and his greatest exploits were performed on scenes unfamiliar to
the mass of his fellow countrymen. But a few opinions can be given to
show that he was rated at his full value by the foremost men of the day.
Perhaps the most striking testimony comes from one who never saw him; it
was written three years after his death, when his brother's biography
appeared. It was Carlyle, the biographer of Cromwell and Frederick the
Great, the most famous man of letters of the day, who wrote in 1856:
'The fine and noble qualities of the man are very recognizable to me;
his piercing, subtle intellect turned all to the practical, giving him
just insight into men and into things; his inexhaustible, adroit
contrivances; his fiery valour; sharp promptitude to seize the good
moment that will not return. A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of
an old knight in him; more of a hero than any modern I have seen for a
long time.' A second tribute comes from one who had known him as an
officer and was a supreme judge of military genius. Wellington was not
given to extravagant words, but on many occasions he expressed himself
in the warmest terms about Napier's talents and services. In 1844,
speaking of the Sind campaign in the House of Lords, he said: 'My Lords,
I must say that, after giving the fullest consideration to these
operations, I have never known any instance of an officer who has shown
in a higher degree that he possesses all the qualities and
qualifications necessary to enable him to conduct great operations.' In
the House of Commons at the same time Sir Robert Peel--the ablest
administrative statesman of that generation, who had read for himself
some of Napier's masterly dispatches--said: 'No one ever doubted Sir
Charles Napier's military powers; but in his other character he does
surprise me--he is possessed of extraordinary talent for civil
administration.' Again, he speaks of him as 'one of three brothers who
have engrafted on the stem of an ancient and honourable lineage that
personal nobility which is derived from unblemished private character,
from the highest sense of personal honour, and from repeated proofs of
valour in the field, which have made their name conspicuous in the
records of their country'.
Indifferent as Charles Napier was to ordinary praise or blame, he would
have appreciated the words of such men, especially when they associated
him with his brothers; but perhaps he would have been more pleased to
know how many thousands of his humble fellow countrymen walked to his
informal funeral at Portsmouth, and to know that the majority of those
who subscribed to his statue in Trafalgar Square were private soldiers
in the army that he had served and loved.
[Illustration: LORD SHAFTESBURY
From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER
SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY
1801-85